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Sunday, December 30, 2012

Vancouver Canucks on Canada's Junior Team – All-time list

To follow up the last blog post, I thought it would be worth seeing the all-time pool from which the Canucks' All-Canadian WJC Team was chosen. All told, there have been 27 Canucks prospects to have played for Canada at the World Juniors. (Again, not including players to be drafted by the Canucks after their WJC appearance.) Among those, four have played in back-to-back years – Brent Tully (1993–94), Chad Allan (1995–96), Brad Ference (1998–99) and Luc Bourdon (2006–07).*

The first player ever to play for Canada's under-twenties as a Canucks prospect? None other than West Coast Express architect Marc Crawford (1981). The Crow played in the World Juniors in the last year that Canada was automatically represented by the CHL's Memorial Cup-winning team. He is also one of three Canucks prospects to wear the "C" for Canada – the others being Jim Sandlak (1986) and Brent Tully (1994).

In total, three Canucks prospects have cracked the WJC All-Star Team for Canada – Tully (1994), Bourdon (2006) and Cody Hodgson (2008) – while Jim Sandlak stands alone in having won any of the IIHF directorate's awards as Best Forward (1986).

The 1994 and 1998 tournaments marked all-time highs for Canucks representing Canada's juniors with four in each year. Meanwhile, there have been 20 instances since the first official tournament in 1977 that Canada was without a Canucks representative, including the current four-year spell. Conversely, a Canuck hopeful was present in eight straight Team Canadas from 1992–99.

On that note and without further ado...

-HC

*Brandon Reid played in 2000, before having been drafted, and again in 2001 as a Canucks prospect.